


Solipsism

by Trojie



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Episode: s05e04 The End, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Sensory Deprivation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-06
Updated: 2013-10-06
Packaged: 2017-12-28 15:28:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/993540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trojie/pseuds/Trojie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Endverse. Sam is locked up inside Lucifer, until it's too late.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Solipsism

**Author's Note:**

> For my 2013 hc_bingo card, prompt "sensory deprivation". Cheerleaded upon by Yalu.

'I thought we were meant to be together!' Sam yells into the darkness inside his own head. ' _Together_ , you son of a bitch! Made for each other, you said,' he adds, pleading and hoarse with the phantom taste of blood in … well, he doesn't have a throat any more. He doesn't have anything any more, except the sound of his own voice and this hollow locked-up feeling. He'd _swear_ he was locked up, except when he tries to feel for the edges of his prison there's nothing out there - no floor under his feet, no walls to touch, no pressure, nothing. Alone. 'Let me out,' he whispers, ashamed. He's cracking up.

It doesn't do any good. 

Sam tried. He really tried. He tried to fight, he tried to reason, and for a while Lucifer played along, but not for too long. He was busy, after all. He had an apocalypse to organise. So he left Sam alone in the dark, tied him up like a dog in the smallest, oldest corner of the hindbrain he could find, and abandoned him. 

In the absence of talking, of getting any attention or reaction, Sam's just been getting angry. It's all he has to play with, the anger, and it's a pretty familiar toy anyway. He's been nursing it and now it's a big red ball of rage, and he imagines that it lights him up in the shadows of the little part of his mind that's still his, whatever part that is, but Lucifer still doesn't even look over at him even if he is lit up like the Fourth of July. 

Then again, maybe he isn't.

He can see the light, but is this hallucination? In the absence of touch, sight, hearing, smell, but still conscious … where is Sam? What is Sam, except a voice and the incandescent flare of his own anger, but he _can't_ see, so why is it so red? Why is it dark around him? 

'Let me out,' Sam tries again. If he knew where to aim he'd attack, but he doesn't, and Lucifer doesn't respond.

The last time Sam remembers knowing is 4.23am. He thinks it was a Thursday. August sometime, but that's hazier as a specific memory than the last time he looked at his own watch. The year though, that he knows, remembers. The last time he opened his own eyes and saw the world, it was 2009. Maybe two months after he said _yes_.

The next time he opens his eyes, if he ever does again, it might be 4.24am. Might be Thursday. Might be 2009, August - but just the same it might be 2025 and he'll open his eyes as the face of the King of Hell on Earth. Whatever. It's _Apocalypse Now_ and forever. 

Maybe Sam Winchester is a brain in a jar. Maybe the reason he gets no answers and no contact and no anything is because they aren't there for him to hear or touch or find. Maybe he invented the outside world, and invented the Devil to swallow him up. 

Well, Sam Winchester is an _angry_ brain in a jar, desperate to stab and tear and rend, and he acts out. It feels better than doing nothing. He visualises what he would do if he had Lucifer (real or not) at his mercy, gnashing his teeth and flexing his fingers, wanting to lash out, and he can practically feel it under his fingers, taste blood (but he always tastes blood), breathe in the stench of sweat and fear, feel the crunch of his enemy breaking under his hands - 

\- and he realises it's real too late, realises he's _touching something_ too late, and Dean dies. 

Lucifer laughs at him - stimulation, contact, acknowledgement, at last, _at last_ , and the shaking junkie rat of his hindbrain is exultant - and Sam yells _no!_ too late. 

Lucifer puts Sam's foot on Dean's throat, and Dean dies, and the shadows in his eyes don't change. He looks so broken-down. This isn't real. Please, please, let this not be real. Let that not be Dean. He looks too tired _(dead)_ to be real, Sam's brain is making this up, forgetting details because it's been too long. He didn't kill his brother. He's cracking up. Sam can feel his fingers and toes again but he can't feel the tears that should be on his face if this is real. He has no empirical evidence that he isn't a brain in a jar. He thought he could feel light and see red, and he understands that he was just making that up out of electrical patterns in his brain, so what's to stop him making this up, this sensory experience of killing his brother? 

He _couldn't_ have killed his brother. He's a brain in a jar. None of the things he feels are real.

But. Lucifer turns Sam's body, and Dean is there. too - standing and staring and alive. The Dean Sam remembers. The Dean underfoot is older - the Dean facing him is exactly how Sam last saw him and it makes Sam suddenly cripplingly frightened of how much time has passed between 4.23am on maybe-Thursday, August 2009, and now. 

_It's 2014,_ Lucifer informs him amusedly. _Your brother has been brought here by one of mine. I guess they're trying to teach him a lesson about what happens if he keeps fighting them._

Sam reels from so many words, from the matter-of-fact way Lucifer talks to him again like he's real. Like this isn't a hallucination. The anger was real all along and so was Sam and so is the world he's trapped away from and _so is the fact that he just killed his brother._

And his brother from five years ago is standing in front of him with that expression on his face that Sam remembers, the one that tipped Sam's _no, I'll kill myself first_ into a _yes, because I think I have a plan_. He was cold then, Dean was. Resigned and doomed and fighting even though he couldn't see a way through, and Sam had nothing but burning anger and desperation, and they were so apart. 

Sam doesn't know how that Dean got here, just that he has to go back. He can't be here. He can't see Sam like this. He can't die here. Sam struggles, wants to yell and scream for Dean to save himself. His throat doesn't even work. He doesn't have a single opening. He's real and locked away and he can't feel a thing except the phantom tears he's not shedding. 

'I win,' says Lucifer in Sam's voice to Dean, echoing inside for Sam to hear as well. This is a lesson for both of them. 'So, I win.'

And it seems like he thinks that's the end of it, but then Dean says, 'You're wrong,' and he's angry, he's really, finally _angry_ , the same way Sam is angry, and Sam suddenly feels hope, like a tiny ember in the middle of him, preserved in glass and warming him. 

'See you in five years, Dean,' says Lucifer, arrogant and smug and over-confident, and he flies out of the beautiful garden with Sam in tow. He thinks that that was another victory. He doesn't see what Sam saw in Dean's eyes. Lucifer snaps Sam back into the dark, but it doesn't matter. 

He's not going to _get_ five years.

Maybe Sam Winchester is a brain in a jar, but now he has hope that it can be smashed. His brother will smash it.


End file.
